kallifatides He blamed it on his age. Creative writer's block can always be interpreted as an external signal, exogenous, like something supervening that crushes any will. But being a Greek writer is difficult. Because everything is born in Greece, even more so oratory and literature, that sublimation of language as a means of communication, as a way of transmitting the world to the following generations. Or also as an argument to destroy an opponent without weapons, only with maieutics and some sophistry.
That sword of Damocles is not easy to carry because it even has to keep awake with its pendulous edge on the bed. A complicated legacy that another illustrious Greek storyteller like Petros markaris fits wonderfully rocking modern currents, in crime novels made current literature without much roots in traditions of this kind. But Kallifatides still continues with his own dilemmas as a writer in the cradle of Western literature.
The result is a deep, intense, intimate and existentialist Kallifatides who decides to pivot his narrative on his own experiences as a universal Greek, as grand as it is humble. Because in the end we all wrote our universal books, or so we pretend.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Theodor Kallifatides
Another life to live
In my condition as a humble writer I once thought about the benefits of this hobby to which one can dedicate oneself a lifetime. But not even that is possible in light of the evidence of a Kallifatides capable of bringing us the physical pain and exhaustion that reaches us with old age, where any narrative slips with blood ink. But yes, Kallifatides, even so or perhaps precisely because of that feeling of melancholic decadence, the effort to write still makes more sense.
"No one should write after the age of XNUMX," a friend had told him. At seventy-seven, blocked as a writer, Theodor Kallifatides makes the difficult decision to sell the Stockholm studio, where he worked diligently for decades, and retire.
Unable to write and yet unable not to write, he travels to his native Greece in the hope of rediscovering the lost fluency of language. In this beautiful text, Kallifatides explores the relationship between a meaningful life and meaningful work, and how to reconcile with aging.
But he also addresses troubling trends in contemporary Europe, from religious intolerance and anti-immigrant prejudice to the housing crisis and his sadness over the battered state of his beloved Greece. Kallifatides offers a deep, sensitive and engaging meditation on writing and the place of each of us in a changing world.
The siege of Troy
The lyrics of the battles of the ancient world. The epic of men made demigods by proving their heroics. Bad business when the shadows of the world had to look to the old myths to find some hope ...
In this insightful account of The Iliad, a young Greek teacher draws on the lasting power of myth to help her students cope with the terrors of Nazi occupation. Bombs fall on a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter.
There he tells them about another war, when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, he tells how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat and longing, and how opponents face off: army against army, man against man. Helmets are cut off, heads fly, blood flows.
Now others are invading Greece, the army of Nazi Germany. But the horrors are the same thousands of years later. Theodor Kallifatides provides remarkable psychological insight in his modern version of The Iliad, downplaying the role of the gods and delving into the mindset of their mortal heroes.
Homer's epic comes to life with a renewed urgency that allows us to experience events as if they were first-hand, revealing timeless truths about the folly of war and what it means to be human.
Mothers and sons
At the age of sixty-eight, Theodor Kallifatides, exiled in Sweden for more than four decades, visits his mother of ninety-two, who continues to reside in Athens. They both know that it may be one of their last encounters.
During the week they spend together, they remember what has been the most important thing in their lives with a decisive presence of the father, of whom Theodor is reading the written account that he has left him of what has been his difficult existence, since its origins. as a Greek exile in Turkey, going through his months in a Nazi prison and his passion for teaching. The origins of a family that go through the twentieth century are thus revealed.
But the book is above all a wonderful tribute to the love of a mother, whom Kallifatides knows how to embody in these pages in an unforgettable way, while managing to convey a universal truth about the importance of that figure in our lives.
I have read all three and I highlight his beautiful historical novel "Timandra".